Optical fiber connectors typically use a ferrule in which the optical fibers are terminated and secured. There are commercially available ferrules in the market, such as the MT ferrule, available from various suppliers such as US Conec, Inc. North Carolina; Furukawa America Corporation, Atlanta, Ga.; Sumitomo Electric, Japan; or Hakusan LTD, Japan. The MT ferrule can accommodate a variety of different numbers of optical fibers and fiber optic ribbons. For example, a MT 24 ferrule can accommodate up to 24 optical fibers. Usually the optical fibers are stacked in an array of two rows and twelve columns. As one skilled in the art readily knows, fiber optic ribbons (sometimes referred to herein simply as “ribbons” for convenience) are supplied with several individual fibers disposed parallel to one another, each individual optical fiber having a glass core, a glass cladding, both of which are being protected in a polymeric coating, which can be color coded. A plurality of these individual optical fibers are impregnated in a polymeric ribbon matrix to form a fiber optic ribbon. Currently, fiber optic ribbons are commercially supplied as 2-fiber ribbons, 4-fiber ribbons, 8-fiber ribbons, and 12-fiber ribbons.
Today, fiber optic connectors are being designed to handle higher numbers of optical fibers to provide for a larger number of optical communication channels. For example, while it is very common to have a fiber optic connector terminated with eight individual optical fibers, in some applications, it is more desirable to terminate a similar connector with 24, 32, 48, or even 60 optical fibers. When multiple fiber optic ribbons and their associated individual fibers are manually installed into a ferrule, the process can be very time consuming. One skilled in the art will appreciate the difficulty of manual installation given that a typical 8-fiber ribbon as supplied from Corning Cable Systems, LLC, Hickory, N.C. is about 2 mm wide and 0.32 mm thick, with each coated individual fiber being about 250 micrometer in diameter. As of the filing date, product information on the Corning fiber optic ribbons can be found at the www.corningcablesystems.com web site.
One common practice for installing multiple ribbons into a ferrule, such as a guiding ferrule, is to install one ribbon at a time. The 24-fiber, multiple ribbon MT ferrule has been designed with stepped rows of v-grooves inside the ferrule, each groove row functioning to guide and to accommodate a ribbon. Usually, one installs the bottom most ribbon first, where the v-grooves are the longest by aligning the fibers of the ribbon in the guiding v-grooves and then pushing the fibers into the connected fiber holes. One then installs a second ribbon in a second row of v-grooves that is slightly shorter than the first row. Because most ferrules have an opening on the top, the installer is able to visually see the ribbons entering each row of v-grooves. Such a process can be very time consuming and can produce low yield. Thus, there is a need in the art for different ferrule designs that allow for easy and efficient installation of optical fibers, whether the optical fibers are in the form of multiple ribbons or in the form of a plurality of single optical fibers.